Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

First-ever book length study of the relationship between Lidiia Ivanov and George Balanchine
Based on extensive archival research in Russia, Georgia, Finland, France, and the US
Brings together political history, cultural history, and biography to shed new light on a pivotal moment in Russian history

Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

Description

Balanchine and the Lost Muse is a dual biography of the early lives of two key figures in Russian ballet, in the crucial time surrounding the Russian revolution: famed choreographer George Balanchine and his close childhood friend, ballerina Liidia (Lidochka) Ivanova. Tracing the lives and friendship of these two dancers from years just before the 1917 Russian Revolution to Balanchine's escape from Russia in 1924, author Elizabeth Kendall sheds new light on a crucial flash point in the history of ballet-one where politics and art meet in legendary St. Petersburg, both culture and nation struggling to reconfigure themselves in the wake of the birth of modern Russia.

Drawing upon extensive archival research, Kendall weaves a fascinating tale of this crucial period in the life of the man who would ultimately go on to be the most influential choreographer in modern ballet. Abandoned by his mother on the steps of the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet Academy in 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine spent his formative years studying the art of dance in Russia's tumultuous capital city. It was there, as he struggled to support himself while studying and performing ballet, where Balanchine met Ivanonva, the first dancer with whom he would ever compose and dance. A talented and bold dancer who grew close to the Bolshevik elite in her adolescent years, Ivanova was a source of great inspiration to Balanchine—both during their youth together, and later in life, after her tragic and mysterious death just days before she had planned to leave Russia with Balanchine and their friends in 1924. Although he would have a great number of muses, many of them lovers, the dark beauty of his dear friend Lidochka haunted much of his work for years to come. Part biography and part urban cultural history, Balanchine and the Lost Muse presents a sweeping account of the heyday of modern ballet and the culture at the heart of the unmoored ideals, futuristic visions, and human decadence that characterized the Russian Revolution.

Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

Introduction
Chapter 1. The Balanchivadze family
Chapter 2. Everyone Wants to be the Favorite Child.
Chapter 3. Balanchine's first year at the Imperial Theater School.
Chapter 4. "Everything simple and full of light". Lidochka's childhood.
Chapter 5. Inside the Romanov Laboratory.
Chapter 6. Revolution
Chapter 7. 1918 - 1920: Civil War. The Chosen Generation.
Chapter 8. 1920 - 1923: The Young Ballet is born.
Chapter 9. 1923-1924: The Last Year .
Chapter 10. Epilogue.
Appendix I. The Other Family
Notes
References
Index

Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

Author Information

Elizabeth Kendall, Associate Professor of Writing, The New School, USA

Elizabeth Kendall is author of Autobiography of a Wardrobe (Pantheon 2008); American Daughter (Random House 2000); The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s (Knopf 1990); and Where She Danced (Knopf 1979). She is a tenured associate professor of Literary Studies at The New School. She has written for The New Yorker, Vogue, Ballet News, Dance Magazine, The New York Times, Elle, The New Republic and other journals.

Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

Reviews and Awards

"Kendall's portrait of Balanchine's first twenty years will now be the standard reference for this period ... Balanchine and the Lost Muse is a breathtaking conversation with [Balanchine himself]." - Laura Jacobs, London Review of Books

"Kendall's great success is her illustration of the profound love and devotion of these dancers for their art." - Kirkus,

"The book reads like a detective novel, but has pages of luminous writing about the choreographer and his ballet." - Dance Magazine

"[Kendall's] history of ballet in the early post-Revolutionary period is very valuable, as Balanchine told us little about his youth." - New Yorker

"Elizabeth Kendall has unearthed the world of Balanchines childhood. For this alone we owe her a great debt ... This is her real strength: at its best, her book is not only a portrait of Balanchines youth, it is a portrait of Russia in collapse of the world that was dying as Balanchine was coming of age." - Jennifer Homans, New York Review of Books

"Kendall's ability to breathe life into characters and situations is one of the main pleasures of the book" - The Nation (1/20 issue)

Balanchine and the Lost Muse

Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer

Elizabeth Kendall

From Our Blog

Summers with George Balanchine

By Elizabeth Kendall A hundred years ago in the summer of 1913, nine-year-old George Balanchine, then Georgi Balanchivadze, spent the last moments of normal childhood — in the country, in the forest by a lake — before he was abruptly brought back to St. Petersburg.

Posted on July 23, 2013

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The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky, and Balanchine

100 years ago, the world was shocked by, of all things, a ballet. Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring), choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and composed by Igor Stravinsky, caused a riot when it was first performed at the ThÃ©Ã¢tre des Champs-ÃlysÃ©es in Paris on 29 May 1913. Stravinsky's composition was revolutionary; it introduced dissonance in classical music.

Posted on May 29, 2013

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